The Fifth Column

by Andrew Gross

  “Not even a beer, Liz.” I looked at her. “You know that’s a condition of seeing Emma.”

  “Well, that’s good. It really is. But I’m sorry, I trust them. I do.”

  “What you’re saying is,” I said with a resigned smile, “you trust them more than you trust me.”

  “I guess what I am saying is, they’ve given me a whole lot more reason to, Charlie, if you know what I mean. Now, look, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got to get on to tidying up this place.”

  “Okay.” I got up. “If you like I could stay and help?”

  “Really…?” She looked at me dubiously. “Thanks though.” She picked up the laundry bin again and shook her head. “Willi and Trudi as spies…” She gave me an amused chortle. “Please … You know that British film director Hitchcock would surely have some fun with that.”

  15

  For a couple of weeks nothing much happened. October crawled into November. I taught my classes, saw Emma on Mondays and Thursdays, and minded my own business.

  But in the world, FDR pushed hard against the isolationists in Congress to finally put an end to the Neutrality Act. The destroyer Reuben James was sunk by German U-boats off the coast of Iceland with 115 of its crew, and everyone thought, This could be it. Roosevelt had no choice but to declare war. But no. After a week or so, I asked Emma if she had seen Uncle Willi and Aunt Trudi, and she said she had been to their place just the other day. They had brought her some new slides for her View-Master.

  “Oh,” I said, “I could have brought you more, honey.”

  “No, they wanted to do it, Daddy. We talked about famous rivers.”

  “Rivers?”

  “Yes, they wanted to show me pictures of the Rhine.”

  The Rhine runs through both Germany and Switzerland, Charlie, I reminded myself.

  “Okay, good, honey.”

  Then that Thursday I happened to bump into Willi leaving the brownstone as I arrived. It was the first time I had actually seen him since the night I’d followed him to Marienplatz. If he had spotted me there, he surely showed no sign of it, tipping his hat to me on the stairs, commenting that he had just seen Emma the other day and how pretty she looked. Reminding me that they would have to have me over sometime soon, to discuss, as he put it with a genial smile, “all things historical.”

  I said yes, we would have to do that sometime soon, holding back the urge to confront him on what I’d witnessed at the beer hall.

  “Enjoy your visit,” he said cheerily, with a nod of his cane. Then he headed down the block toward Third, never looking back.

  That day, I helped Emma with her schoolwork. Mrs. Shearer excused herself and went down to the basement to do some laundry. From the kitchen table, over a multiplication table, I heard the sound of the door opening across the hall. At first, I thought maybe it was another of those so-called customers again; I hadn’t seen one in a while. Emma was telling me about something at school. How one of her friends made a big mess finger painting and got it over a bunch of her classmates and— I held up my hand for her to be quiet. “Hold it a second, honey.”

  “What, Daddy?”

  Instead of someone coming up the stairs, I heard the sound of Trudi Bauer going down, engaged in conversation with Mrs. Bainbridge, the landlady, who I’d heard her converse with from time to time. Excusing myself, I went to the door and peeked out onto the landing. Trudi was all the way down on the first floor. I thought I heard some kind of delivery taking place.

  Across the landing I noticed her door was slightly ajar. She had not locked it, clearly intending to be back up quickly.

  Downstairs, I heard the outside door open and she and Mrs. Bainbridge engaged in conversation.

  Sometimes they could go on and on for a while.

  I stared at the cracked-open door just a few feet in front of me. I don’t know what finally gave me the courage—or the foolishness. Tangible evidence—that was what was ringing in my mind. Some kind of confirmation to my suspicions. So how will you learn more? I knew that Willi was out. I’d seen him leave.

  The opportunity was just staring me in the face.

  If there was ever a time to peek into the Bauers’ lives, Charlie, I stood there, staring, this is it now.

  “Emma, just keep at what you’re doing for a short while, honey,” I told her. “I’ll be right back.”

  “Where are you going, Daddy?” She looked up.

  “I left something downstairs” was the best I could come up with.

  “Okay, Daddy,” she said, leaning over her writing tablet, doing numbers.

  I stepped outside, keeping Liz’s door slightly ajar. My heart beat insistently. I felt certain, if Trudi came back up, I’d hear her approach on the stairs long before the third floor and I could get back in. The house was so old and creaky you could hear someone two floors below you with plenty of time to run back.

  And often, her conversations with Mrs. Bainbridge could go on for minutes.

  My heart picking up a beat, I stole across the landing and edged her door open wider. I thought this was surely the craziest thing I’d ever done. Or the dumbest. Well, the second dumbest, I reminded myself, thinking back to the bar that night. I placed a stool I found inside to block the door from closing behind me and to be able to better hear downstairs. I was certain, once Trudi began her way back up, I’d have adequate warning. I’d probably even feel it on the floorboards. The hairs on my arms stood on edge.

  I crept inside.

  Their apartment was exactly how I’d seen it the last time I was in there. I was hit by the familiar smell of pipe tobacco. The place was clean, tidy, orderly. The same photographs in silver frames arranged on a round wood table, all brightly polished. The Tiffany-style lamps, emitting a soft glow. The love seat, fresh and plump, without a single wrinkle on it—embroidered pillows puffed out and neatly arranged. Covering the floor were dark, hand-loomed rugs.

  Quickly, I went over and skimmed through a pile of record jackets next to the phonograph: Brahms, Beethoven, Berlioz, Liszt, even Benny Goodman and Cab Calloway. They obviously liked jazz.

  Looking around, it seemed as ordinary as any apartment in the city.

  No sign of her from downstairs.

  Only one thing seemed to strike me as different from the last time I was in there—the sense that something was missing. I looked around, trying to determine exactly what that was, and finally, it hit me.

  The book of Darwin’s journeys that had been on the coffee table was no longer there.

  Instead, there was an art book on the French Impressionists. Why would the book be missing? I noticed a stack of large books on a shelf and went over and checked, but didn’t see it there either.

  Not exactly a crime, I thought, or proof of anything diabolical.

  I took a scan around. I didn’t know what I was even looking for: a large Nazi banner hung on the wall? Photographs of Hitler and Göring shaking the Bauers’ hands; ones that they took down the second company would come in? Just something, I told myself. Anything. I’d know it when I saw it.

  In any case, I saw nothing at all.

  I went back to the front door and stuck out my ear. I could still hear the occasional sound of Trudi and Mrs. Bainbridge conversing downstairs. Maybe she had even invited her in for tea.

  Feeling like I still had time, I went in and took a peek around the bedroom. I’d never been in there before, of course. My heart beat against my ribs. Just find something, anything, I exhorted myself. There has to be something here, Charlie. Find it. I knew the Bauers weren’t who they said they were, yet as I scanned the room, there was nothing, not a single sign anywhere, to back up my suspicions. I opened their bedroom closet and peeked inside. On one side were his belongings, suits arranged in neat rows. On the other side, dresses and skirts. Earrings and necklaces in little boxes on the shelf. I took care not to disturb a thing or give any sign that someone had been here. Quickening my pace, I went over to their night tables. A stack of books. A leather-bound book
of poems. Rilke. A copy of Thomas Mann. Buddenbrooks. In German.

  Nothing at all.

  In haste now, I went over to the dresser and rummaged through the drawers. Just clothes. I started to feel completely foolish when I stopped to think what I was doing. On the top of the dresser, in a glass bowl, there was some loose change and an old brass key.

  I’d been in there for three minutes now. I’d better get out of there, I thought. I was already pressing my luck.

  Disappointed, I headed back to the front hall, careful not to make noise on the floorboards. Before heading out, I looked around one last time to see if I was missing something. I’d found nothing. Not a thing to support my belief that anything untoward was going on. And maybe that’s all that it was, I was starting to think: their beliefs. Maybe the Bauers were simply too ashamed to admit they admired the Nazi regime and had made up stories to mask their convictions. Maybe I had, as Liz had said, just wanted to find something on them and blown the whole thing out of proportion.

  I looked at my watch. Five minutes now. Trudi might be heading back up any second. And what if she came back up and caught me here. What then? Then I’d never live it down with Liz. This whole thing had just been an exercise in futility. Maybe I had to give up this silly wild-goose chase once and for all.

  As I put the stool back where I had found it and was about to exit, I noticed the hall closet near the front door. I figured, what the hell, I’d already gone this far. She wasn’t coming up yet. I still had time. I went over and opened the closet doors. Inside were coats, boots, galoshes neatly arranged on the floor. Umbrellas hung over the rail. Nothing out of the ordinary again.

  You’d better get out of here, Charlie.

  In the corner I noticed an old black steamer trunk, like from a shipping line. With a hand-painted number seven on the side and a large, locked clasp. Blankets and linens were folded neatly on top of it. I listened for her coming back up the stairs, but still didn’t hear anyone coming.

  So what the hell …

  I kneeled down and transferred the linens onto the floor. Then I tugged at the trunk’s clasp—locked. I tried to see if there was any way I could lift the top at all, but no … It was locked tight.

  The clasp and the hinges were kind of a burnished brass—antique.

  Then something flashed inside me. Brass.

  I ran back into the bedroom and found the old key I had spotted in the bowl on the dresser. It was a long shot, I knew, but it was brass and old and seemed to match the trunk’s clasps. It looked like it might possibly work. I squeezed it in the keyhole and turned it, and to my delight, the lock opened cleanly. I flicked open the clasps, lifted the top, and peered inside. It had a musty, mildewy smell, just more linens and clothes—a blanket and a duvet cover. Not exactly the bonanza I was hoping for. I pulled a pile of folded sweaters off the top.

  My eyes went wide in shock.

  I was staring at the missing book by Darwin.

  “Sonovabitch,” I said.

  The Voyage of the Beagle. The large tome in German that was on the coffee table my last time here. In the trunk. What was it possibly doing locked away in here? I picked the book up and flipped through the pages. Several of the page numbers had been circled in pen. And many individual words throughout had been circled or underlined as well, seemingly at random. The text was all in German, and while I spoke a bit, I didn’t grasp what many of the words meant. But why had it been hidden away in here? Under lock and key. I just kept flipping through the pages. I knew I was onto something.

  Why, Charlie?

  I just kept staring.

  Then I suddenly flashed back to the charred strips of paper I seen in the trash that day.

  Numbers.

  Though it had been a month, they were still fresh in my head—I’d memorized them—as if I’d seen them yesterday:

  128 3 7. 14 12 3. 0300.

  It had to be some kind of code.

  I wished I could take the damn thing and try to figure it out. Someone should. Why had they locked it away in here? But then an idea hit me completely out of the blue.

  I flipped to the page of the first number—128. Continuing, I counted down the lines to the line corresponding with the second number—3, then on a whim, over seven words—the third number—and came upon a word that indeed had been circled.

  December.

  It was the same in German. December. I sounded out the German words: “We skirted around into the harbor on the third of December.…”

  Quickly, I flipped to page 14, the first of the second set of numbers I’d seen in the trash. In the same manner, I scrolled my finger down to the twelfth line and then across to the third word.

  It too was circled. This time it was the word “sechs,” which I knew enough German to know was the number six. I read: “Six of us got in the launch…”

  I put them together. December 6.

  The last number was 0300. Could that be three A.M.?

  December 6, 0300.

  It could just be.

  It damn well could be a code I’d fallen onto. And Darwin’s Voyage of the Beagle was the key.

  Suddenly I heard Trudi’s voice, calling from below. “Yes, there’s a Humphrey Bogart film at the Orpheum, Millie. We should go. Shall I ask Willi?”

  It sounded as if she was at the bottom of the stairs.

  Hurriedly, I put the Darwin back in the trunk. But as I did, I felt something hard and resistant beneath the padding. Metal. I had to get out of there. I didn’t have much time. But consumed now, I folded back the blankets and sweaters to see what was underneath.

  Again, my breath was stolen away.

  It was a radio transmitter. I mean, I’d never seen one before—maybe in some Hitchcock film—but it was a dark gray box with some kind of a frequency gauge and knob, an antenna and headset. A transmitter.

  That’s all it could be.

  And next to it, wrapped in a blue towel, I felt a gun.

  A gun and a transmitter. The perfect Swiss couple.

  What more proof did I need?

  Suddenly the floorboards creaked and someone came up behind me. “What is that?” I heard. My heart climbed in my throat. I spun around, and to my relief, saw my daughter there, staring at me. She couldn’t see exactly what was in the trunk, but just as bad, maybe worse, was that she had found me there—in the Bauers’ apartment, rummaging through their closet. She may be only six, but she was in their company all the time. She could easily divulge this.

  “Nothing, honey,” I said, covering the gun and transmitter. “Just a phonograph. A toy.”

  “Uncle Willi and Aunt Trudi wouldn’t be happy to see you do that, would they, Daddy?”

  No, I suppose they wouldn’t, my look back said. “Let’s not say anything about this, peach,” I said. “Okay? How about we let it be our little secret.”

  Her gaze drifted past me to the open trunk. “Okay.”

  Suddenly, from outside, I heard the thump of footsteps coming up the staircase. Trudi heading back up. No way she can find us here.

  Quickly, I stuffed the linens back on top of the transmitter and lay the Darwin back on top, covering it like I had found it, and closed the trunk, quickly locking the clasps. I picked up the pile of bedding from the carpet and placed it neatly back on top.

  We had to get out of there now.

  “Come on, honey, shhh,” I said, and put my finger to my lips. I put the key back in the lock and twisted it closed. “Let’s go.”

  By then, Trudi had already made her way up to the first floor. I leaped up and took hold of Emma’s hand, and we headed to the door. Suddenly I looked down and realized I still had the trunk key in my hand. My God …

  They’d know someone was in there.

  I shot a glance to the bedroom and didn’t think there was any way I could make it back there and put it back into the bowl on the dresser without her coming in and finding us there. But if I didn’t, it was a sure thing they’d know someone had been inside.

&n
bsp; Even worse, seen things.

  Emma looked up at me and saw the whitened terror on my face. “Daddy, what’s wrong?”

  “Just stay there, honey.”

  I hurried back into the bedroom, not caring about noise now, and tossed the key in the bowl. But in my haste, it ringed around the edge of the bowl and instead of tumbling in, fell out.

  It sat in plain sight on the dresser for anyone to see.

  For an instant I just stared at it in horror. Paralyzed. But by that time I was already a step toward the door again and realized I’d never make it out if I went back for it now.

  There was no choice but to get out of there. Now.

  Feverishly, I ratcheted through whatever excuses I could think of in that instant—about Emma noticing the door was unlatched or hoping Aunt Trudi had some cake in there for her. Praying she would back me up and wouldn’t give me away. I ran back out and took her by the hand, whispering frantically, “Let’s go, honey.” We slipped out to the landing through the front door. I was half expecting Trudi Bauer to be staring up at us from the bottom of the third-floor stairway, and I’d have to stumble guiltily through that excuse about Emma, and pray she wouldn’t see right through me.

  Instead, miraculously, she was at the bend at the foot of the staircase between the second and third floors, just about to turn up and catch us there.

  I froze, caught in mid-breath.

  Suddenly someone called out to her from behind. “Mrs. Bauer…”

  It was Mrs. Shearer, coming up with the laundry.

  To my elation, Trudi turned and looked behind her. “Ah, Mrs. Shearer, good afternoon.”

  I don’t think she ever caught a glimpse of us slipping out of her apartment, only ten feet above her. But a moment later she and Mrs. Shearer came up the stairs together and stared at Emma and me, standing there.

  “Trudi.” I nodded. I’m sure my voice cracked. “Mrs. Shearer. Emma and I were just heading out for a walk.” I squeezed my daughter’s hand, praying she wouldn’t give me away.

  Trudi’s eyes seemed to drift from us to her open door. Had I left it cracked just a little farther open than when she had left? There was no more of the cheerful good nature in her demeanor as when we’d first met. Before I’d found that shredded message in her kitchen. What was clear now in her gaze was that she trusted me no more than I did her. Which was zero.